Spring Cleaning: How To Toss Those Old Magazines

Do you have beautiful magazines like National Geographic or Architectural Digest that you’ve been hanging on to for years? Are they worth the real estate that they’re taking up? Think about the cost of storing them. Having piles of magazines can ruin a lovely corner of your home or office. Consider paring down or eliminating–here’s how:

Take a look at your subscriptions and cancel what you can. Do you even remember all the magazines and periodicals you subscribe to? Make a list of what you have and when the subscriptions end. Take a good look at that list and determine how you can simplify. Are there any that you can cancel? Which ones can you bear to let expire? The more you can stop from arriving, the less you’ll have to sort through.

Organize. Organizing is about putting like things together. When you do this with your magazines, you may see that you’re holding on to more than you can realistically read. Purchase magazine containers and store them chronologically to organize what you have. You may find quite a few that you’ll be willing to toss or recycle.

Set boundaries on each and every magazine you receive. How long do you like to save them? When the new issue arrives, do you toss the previous month? That’s a good rule of thumb. If you just can’t bear to toss it that quickly, set boundaries that will work for you. 3 months, 6 months, 1 year… Write down the list of magazines and periodicals you subscribe to and put a time limit on each one. Those National Geographic’s are only going to become valuable when people start to get rid of them! Set some boundaries on your reading/visual consumption and you’ll notice the clutter will lessen.

Share. Consider passing them on to a doctors office or retirement home. Let someone else enjoy the magazines while you pare down.

Monica Friel is president and founder of Chaos to Order. Monica manages and trains a staff of professional organizers who specialize in everything from household clutter to corporate chaos. She also represents brands and speaks publicly as an expert in the field of organizing.
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